Downtown Syracuse to lose parking at Trolley Lot on Sept. 1

Syracuse, NY – People who park at the Trolley Lot in downtown Syracuse’s Armory Square will have to find new places to put their cars by Sept. 1.

Most likely they will have to pay more for them, too.

The 700-space Trolley Lot is closing that day so work can begin on a $70 million, 6 million-gallon sewage storage facility that is part of the Onondaga Lake cleanup plan, officials said. Under the current work schedule it could remain closed to parking until December 2013.

There is space available at other lots and garages to accommodate the estimated 220 customers who take space by the month at the Trolley Lot, said Ben Walsh, deputy commissioner of neighborhood and business development for the city of Syracuse.

“The good news is, we have the capacity for them,” Walsh said. “The bad news is, it’s likely these folks will have to pay more money.”

The letter also told the customers about the availability of space within a few blocks of the Trolley Lot, Murbro General Manager David Gross said.

He said there are 120 open spaces at Murbro Lot 11, South Clinton and West Onondaga streets ($50 a month, according to the Downtown Committee), 50 spaces at the Atrium Garage ($75 to $95) and 300 spaces at the Harrison Street Garage ($75 to $85).

While word only went out this month about the imminent closing, the Trolley Lot has been destined for change for years.

County officials originally proposed to build a sewage treatment facility there as part of the court-ordered effort to keep raw sewage from spilling into Onondaga Lake during heavy rains.

The Clinton CSO Storage Facility now in the works calls for construction of three 18-foot-wide underground tunnels that can store up to 6 million gallons of overflows from Syracuse’s combined sewage and stormwater system.

Two buildings will be erected above ground. One will house a control room that will pump the stored overflows to the Metropolitan Sewage Treatment Plant, Millea said. It will have a plant-covered green roof designed to reduce the kind of rainwater runoff that now plagues the sewer system. A smaller building will store runoff so it can be used later to flush out the storage system, Millea said.

The finished project also will include a parking lot with fewer spaces than the existing one, but with enough to fulfill the current demand, he said.

Jett Industries, based in the Oneonta suburb of Colliersville, is the general contractor, Millea said. Jett is owned by Kiewit Corp., a construction, mining and engineering company.